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Great run, very fun to watch. There were a few things I noticed that might have been possible to improve (can't remember exactly where), but, from personal experience, it's pretty much impossible to make a full game TAS without any minor screw-ups.

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Map 1 - Nothing particularly wrong, but wastes unnecessary rockets. It could have most likely remained 1:23 but exiting with 2 or 3 more of them. I don't think it was necessary blowing 4th rev near rl with rocket, ssg from far would have sufficed. At RK there was no point blowing up second chainer with rocket, switching to ssg and moving to caco/PE while reloading wouldn't waste time but save a rocket. Around 1:0X was the right time to remove the chainer with ssg rather than blowing him at the end. Additionally, there was a possibility to switch to ssg near last 3 mancs when just one crippled was left alive, shoot and exit without losing time for reloading. I'd have settled with 1:24 with 4 more rockets rather.

Map 2 - This was flawed. Absolutely no point in removing those imps with sg at start when you'll be running through the exact same place again and on top of that they'll be coupled so a ssg shot would remove them right away. I'd take out just the one on that higher platform and move on. The way monsters in hall with skull switches were handled was stupid, here's where those 3-4 rockets possibly saved from map 1 would do wonders. Standing and ssging here was just a waste of time as you'll be backtracing for RK anyway. Also, all the stuff including baron which you ssged were easily lurable into crushers. Handling revs near YK was also dumb, waking them up so they would couple right away would be quite advicable. The invis bridge part would benefit from sacrificing 2 rockets at revs instead of 3 ssg shots and switching to rl. Roughly 1:1X should be reachable.

Map 3 - Making first av and rev infight would be preferable as you'd save rockets that way. The way I would try setting up this place would be exactly like this: make rev shoot non-homing missle while making sure av attacks you in its trajectory and shoot rocket at above chainers meanwhile. Switch to cg and take out two shotgunners while moving on into invis bridge area. When you'll come back with that area cleaned, preferable outcome would be that rev + 2 chainers in alcove are dead and av is on top of staircase, so you'd have switched to ssg before coming back, shot av, move to rev+demon room while reloading and then take them out and then av. The invis bridge was also handled awkwardly, ssging those spiders instead of using rl was, like, wtf? If you really had to use ssg, it would be better to use it at those 2 revs and land just 4 shots instead of 6 at spiders. The most time-savvy and rocket-wasty would be to shoot rockets at revs while moving away from them to previous area. In the last area there really should have been some infight scenario orchestrated, like making chainers infight with mancs while you take out PEs and revs.

Map 4 - Poor infight and monster movement manipulation. Using plain max route here would have been better. Punching 4 HKs near chainers behind invisible walls was unnecessary, just let them infight and keep doing other stuff, they will pile up on stairs later where they'll be easily blowable. Those YK barons are absolute must to pile up in front of YK door. Missed trick - line 428 can be pressed from above, no need to fall down near it to press it.

Map 5 - This was the first really major screw-up of run. This map is all about infights, and I don't think anything resembling infights was orchestrated here. Better infights here means faster exit time and more ammo saved up, therefore here's a load of room for improvement for someone patient, maybe even below minute or something around it. Rocket usage here was also exceptionally wasteful.

Map 6 - Why not making those mancs and spiders infight? Using rocket jump to save up one quarter of a second was unnecessary, I think. Ignoring 4 cell cherges in RK room was stupid. Ignoring 2 cell packs and 20 rockets in last room was exceptionally stupid.

Map 7 - You see, up to map 7 you are lured into false sense of having all the ammo you can dream of at your disposal. Once you are past map 7, you are in for a surprise. There is no metric ton of ammo anywhere up to map 15 and quality of run from map 8 onwards depends very heavily on ammo management. It doesn't show as much in TAS as in regular run, but I'd try leaving this map with as much rocket ammo as possible. Cell ammo density is quite heavy in map 9 so that is not particularly necessary to worry about.

Map 8 - Every ssg shot landed at the beginning was a waste of time, nothing much other than that. There is one possible trick I don't think anybody ever noticed that may be a timesaver in TAS: at the beginning after you rise up to circular room, glide in and out of the exit, this way exit will lower and by the time you get back, all the revs will be definitely teleported in meaning ammo and time saving.

Map 9 - Rocket spent on your face in YK room that saved a grand total of 0 seconds was about as useful as it looked like. Room with RK could have been TASed better, you'll be running into secret and out so there wasn't a real point to blow everything up right away and nothing on the way out. Also, you know what I'm going to say about cell pack and backpack left unpicked in that secret, I guess. The room right before last circular room riped for more rockets at disposal. There are 2 cell charges next to exit pad that probably wouldn't require all that much effort to pick up, but I'm not really sure.

Map 10 - Lack of ammo management in previous maps starts to rise and shine. First minute full of ssg was a royal waste of time.

Map 11 - And here comes the ultimate ammo management test. There is a grand total of no ammo for something other than ssg except the very first backpack. The only tolerable ssg shot would be the one where you are moving from point A to B while reloading, everything else is pg food, maybe even rl if avs make nice heaps. The worse news? Map 12 is also especially low on ammo and high on monster density and it doesn't get particularly better in 13 nor 14. Roughly a minute can be cut off here.

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Yes, that was an interesting read; I especially liked the comments about rocket jumps. I wouldn't be that harsh with MAP05, though. "Rocket usage exceptionally wasteful?" with 4-rocket baron kills or 3-rocket kill of an arch-vile + demon it's not something I can really agree with. OTOH, I saw this SSG'ing chaingunners (-warp 5 -skipsec 60), while a normal shotgun would be quicker. Ideally, this map should be replayed like 10 times and one would choose the best outcome (the best time or second/third best time with most rockets/cells saved), but this leads to a question how much time one can dedicate to just a 1/32 portion of a demo.

Also, I believe UV Max movie is an extremely hard category for weapon usage planning ammo management. I managed to screw it up on a single level (eternal MAP30), not wishing to replay big portions (OK, building may be 20 times slower than re-recording, but still), so it's not surprising that one can see many errors like wasted rockets afterwards.

Having said all that, if I would also like some criticism of this sort on any of my future released TAS demos if they happen.

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I watched the demo and really liked it. I'll probably get slammed because I'm a "sucky speedrunner," but I think most of the criticisms here are more bashing than actually constructive, mainly just being haughty and arrogant (which leads one to look like a dick).

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I watched the demo and really liked it. I'll probably get slammed because I'm a "sucky speedrunner," but I think most of the criticisms here are more bashing than actually constructive, mainly just being haughty and arrogant (which leads one to look like a dick).

Eh, I thought that j4rio's criticisms were an interesting read, and I didn't think that his comments gave the impression of haughtiness, since his advice mostly seemed on point. I certainly wouldn't mind if more people commented on my TASes and gave me constructive and thorough criticisms as to how to build runs better. In fact, I wouldn't mind criticism such as this on any of my normal speedruns.

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Eh, I thought that j4rio's criticisms were an interesting read, and I didn't think that his comments gave the impression of haughtiness, since his advice mostly seemed on point. I wouldn't mind criticism such as this on any of my normal speedruns.

It's true that there's some truth to them, but do you want somebody saying what you did is "exceptionally stupid" a bunch of times?

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It's true that there's some truth to them, but do you want somebody saying what you did is "exceptionally stupid" a bunch of times?

He only used "exceptionally stupid" once not a bunch of times. :D

Jokes aside, I suppose that that's a little harsh, but if it's constructive, I guess I wouldn't mind so much.

However, what vdgg said is true that UV-Max TASes are incredibly hard to achieve perfect ammo management, and, for a 32-map max, this does a pretty good job, so j4rio's comments might be a little too harsh. Still, in a way, I'd rather have something like this posted about my runs every once in a while than just "good job."

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I don't really have much else to say. Basic rule of thumb is that every instance of using ssg without moving from point A to point B during reloading animation is an improvable segment. 12-14 are probably the hardest portion of demo for proper management of resources, but from 15 onwards there is more than enough for free wasting. Just a few points of interest - leaving map 32 with filled arsenal is an absolute must, suicide exit in map 17 is IMO not worth it, taking down cyber in map 29 in 5 BFG shots doing max damage would be faster than with plasma gun. That's about it.

vdgg said:
Having said all that, if I would also like some criticism of this sort on any of my future released TAS demos if they happen.[/B]

Most of your (or Andy's) built TASes are too good for somebody not knowing the map inside out to be able to criticize anything.

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Hours? I couldn't even tell you. For such a long span of time it would be impossible to calculate that because school got in the way, so it was interrupted a lot. I can tell you that when I was doing episode 1, I did one map per day, and it was right at the end of summer break so I could afford to work virtually all day. During episode 2 things started getting slightly more draggy, and school started, so I might have spent like 2 days or something per map. By episode 3, recording one map was incredibly sluggish and by the last 5 maps I was just doing it to finish it. Spent upward of a week on one map, often with several days in between each map. I'd guesstimate that it'd be like a solid 200 hours of recording time, dunno.